


Birthright

by canardroublard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Because obviously Rebelcaptain would be Drift Compatible as hell, Drift Compatibility, F/M, Human Kaytu, M/M, Pacific Rim AU, Slow Burn, The first chapter is pretty angsty, but let's be honest Jyn does not have a fluffy childhood, i promise this will get fluffy at some point though, rating may increase later, sorry bout that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9389867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canardroublard/pseuds/canardroublard
Summary: Jyn is seven-and-three-quarters when Saw Gerrera leans down to her level, and tells her that her parents died as heroes.  She knows she is seven-and-three-quarters because she's been counting down the days. Papa said that when she turned eight, he would teach her all about the big robot he and Mama used to protect everyone from the monsters.  Jyn got mad when her Papa exaplined it this way, because she is nearly eight, so she's not a baby, and only a baby would not know the proper names for Jaegers and Kaiju.Or, the Pacific Rim AU that would not leave me alone.





	1. Prologue

"Your Mama and Papa died as heroes."

Saw tells her this when she is seven years old. Seven-and-three-quarters, to be exact. Jyn knows she is seven-and-three-quarters because she has been counting down the days until her eigth birthday. Her Papa said that when she is eight years old, she will be old enough to start learning about the big robot he and Mama use to fight the monsters. Jyn got mad when her Papa exaplined it this way, because she is nearly eight, so she's not a baby, and only a baby would not know the proper names for Jaegers and Kaiju. That made Mama giggle. Papa apologized, said that of course his Stardust was not a baby. But now Mama and Papa are gone. Forever.

Saw does not reassure her, does not dry her tears, does not tuck her smallness into the cove of his grownupness like Mama would. He calmly tells her that a Kaiju killed Mama and Papa, because they tried to stop it from hurting people. Because Kaiju kill, kill everything they touch.

"Your parents asked me to look after you, so you will live on the base with me now," Saw says. Jyn can't stop crying, can't stop the ache in her chest long enough to respond to any of this. Her insides feel like they're filling with cold, cold stone. Boulders heave up and fill her throat. Crouching down to her, Saw puts a big hand on her shoulder and reveals the path of her new life.

"Kid, do you want to learn to kill Kaiju?"

 

* * *

 

 

Anchorage Shatterdome is ginormous. Jyn has no better word in her to describe it. And it's a different bigness than the vast fields where she lived with her parents in their little farmstead, a short distance from base. The sky and fields had felt open, like she could stretch out her arms forever and never bump into anyone. And they never changed much, just quietly spoke the seasons. She could walk to some far meadow and scream as loud as her lungs would permit, and no-one would ever know. But the Shatterdome is big in a way that is not open. It's closed. And busy. If she loosed a scream right now, lots of faces would turn to stare at her. Fifty, a hundred, maybe thousands. Jyn's math skills aren't as good as Papa's, so she doesn't know how many people are here, just that it's more than she's ever seen all together. She doesn't scream or stretch or run. As Saw leads her through the base, she tucks her arms into her chest and silently trots behind him. She clutches the Kyber crystal necklace that Mama gave her. Mama said that Kyber was how the Jaeger pilots could drift, join minds and become one with each other. Jyn's always wondered what that would be like.

"This is the mess," Saw explains. "It's where everyone eats. You can come here any time you like. Just don't bother people." Everyone here is grownup and scary looking, Jyn thinks to herself. How could I possibly bother them? But she doesn't get enough time to really ponder this as Saw keeps walking, down a cramped corridor and stops at a door.

"You will live in this room. Your things will be brought to you soon. Keep your room clean and make your bed. I will come get you at oh-seven-hundred for breakfast."

As he begins to turn away, Jyn finally manages to softly speak. "S...Gerrera... Sir?"

"Yes, Jyn?"

"How will I know when it's oh-seven-hundred?"

Saw frowns down at her for a moment, assessing. Something shifts in his face a little. For a second he looks less scary, more tired.

"I'll get someone to buy you a watch first thing tomorrow. You'll need a watch now."

 

* * *

 

 

No-one knows how to treat her when Saw drops her off at basic training a week later with no more than a "Jyn's going to be making herself useful from now on" to the instructor. Jyn's face burns as everyone in the room stares at her. They're all grownups, no-one looks even close to her age. Years later, she will remember this moment and laugh at how a bunch of seventeen-year-olds could seem grownup. Everything in life is so very relative.

She is by turns curio, class pet, little sister, and nuisance to the recruits she's thrown in with. No-one expects anything of a scrawny kid. By the third class, they're bored of her sullen silence and go back to their grownup jokes. But she stays, sits quietly at her desk, legs swinging off her too-big chair, and tries to take notes with her shaky, childish scrawl, just like everyone else is. She can't catch much in her writing, but everything is quietly tucked away in her mind. The history of the Kaiju invasion, how the great beasts, aliens, monsters began breaking through a crack in the seafloor ten years ago. The workings of Jaegers, the giant robots piloted by teams of two, joined into one, sent to stop the Kaiju before they attack another coastal city. This is good stuff, this is stuff she can use later.

When filing out of her third class, she overhears Ray Montoya, the annoying recruit who keeps calling her "squirt", in conversation with the teacher.

"She's not gonna be in sparring classes, right? I mean, c'mon, who's gonna be the poor sap who has to train against a kid? How're we supposed to learn shit when we're babysitting Little Orphan Annie?"

Well, Ray is a lot more annoying after she kicks him in the shins and he starts howling. She may also bite him. Maybe. Saw is mad as hell when he storms into the classroom to fetch her, dragged away from some important meeting or whatever it is he does when she's in class. Jyn is sure he's going to hit her. But he tells Captain Fauré that teaching Jyn to fight properly will be much better for everyone than letting the whole biting thing carry on. And since he's everyone's boss here, Captain Fauré can't really argue with that logic.

 

* * *

 

 

As leader of the Anchorage Shatterdome, Saw is not a hands-on guardian, would bristle at the very notion of being Jyn's anything "parental" to her. She is his ward. Jyn asks no comfort of Saw. Or kindness. Jyn does not ask for the luxuries of her past. She takes from Saw what he is willing to give. Her birthright, as daughter of the world's best Jaeger team, is to become a great pilot herself. Saw helps her fill the void within herself using three different media:

  * Knowledge
  * Fighting skills
  * A deep, expanding, granite lump of pure hate in her centre mass. She does not burn rage, does not throb with anger. Saw will stoke that fire within her when he abandons her. Later. For now, she fills her soul with cold hate for the things that killed her parents. She will learn to kill them.



These are the pillars of her life now. And if she squeezes her eyes tight to her memories and works hard enough to keep running forward, it feels almost like the fullness of living used to feel.

So she trains.

 

* * *

 

 

Somehow, despite being a child in the grownup world, Jyn starts to make a few friends. She doesn't realize it's happening at first. Most people in the mess give her a wide berth, turned away by her sullen grief and fear. But one day when the mess is especially full, someone sits down across from her. No-one has ever sat down with Jyn, apart from her occasional meals with Saw. This is weird.

She turns her eyes up from her food and sees a woman. She looks a little older than the recruits, and her skin is the same colour as Saw's. She looks big and strong, bigger than many of the recruits in Jyn's class. Glancing around the mess, the woman begins to speak.

"Hey, I'm new here. Just transferred in from Sydney. Can I sit with you?"

Jyn just nods, but that's enough for the woman to settle in and start eating. For a moment, Jyn thinks that this will be the extent of their conversation. Which would be perfectly fine. However, she starts to speak to Jyn again. Introduces herself (her name is Lila) and gets Jyn's name.

"Why are you here, Jyn Erso?"

People don't ask her that. Everyone in the Shatterdome knows about her parents, since she was the topic of hot gossip for the first few weeks after her arrival. This woman, Lila, doesn't know that people don't ask her these things. No-one talks about her parents.

"I have to live here now," is what Jyn finally manages to say. Lila stops eating at that, eyes her closely for a moment. Seems to come to a decision.

"I have to live here now, too," Lila says, smiling gently. "PPDC said Anchorage needs mechanics, and I got sent here."

Jyn's never met anyone else on base who didn't chose to come here, apart from her. Lila keeps sitting with her at lunch, and slowly they learn to be friends. Lila brings her toys, sometimes, little dolls made out of left-over metal from the Jaegers. Jyn teaches Lila the best places on base to be alone, away from the noise. But mostly they eat lunch together. Lila is the first person who will talk with Jyn about her Mama and Papa, who Jyn trusts enough to reveal her Mama's necklace. Saw always changes the subject when Jyn mentions them, tells her not to focus on the past. But Lila is missing people too, tells Jyn stories about her wife and son who still live in Sydney. Jyn tells her a little bit about her life before the Shatterdome, about the farmstead.

Home.

 

* * *

 

 

Filling herself with knowledge and skill is so very easy. It feels good. If she spends her days learning enough, sparring enough, exercising enough, she can almost believe for the moment that this is a full life. Most of the grownups in her life like her well enough, but Jyn only really gets their notice when she's excelling at something. Fighting, mostly. If she does really well at fighting, Saw will even offer her a scrap of praise. By age thirteen she's fighting the adult recruits and starting to earn wins against them. No-one will admit to being beat by a thirteen year old, and her opponents seem to have an epidemic of headaches, old injuries, flus, colds, and other mysterious ailments that, after the fights, suddenly become a hindrance to their performance that day. If they'd been feeling one-hundred-percent, they would've beaten her. Obviously.

Jyn is flush with the excitement of her latest sparring win when she sits down with Lila for lunch at thirteen-hundred one grey day. Lila is usually a great listener. She asks all of the right questions, makes the appropriate noises of surprise or amazement, and laughs at the funny parts. Jyn's made other friends in the years since they met, but Lila is her oldest friend here, her best friend. She's oddly subdued throughout this lunch, though.

"Jyn, honey," she says softly, after the fight is fully told, "Jyn, I don't know how to say this. They're transferring me away. Back to Sydney, to be with my family again."

And just like that, Jyn suddenly feels seven-and-three-quarters again. Split open down the middle, with her soft aspects dangling out, ugly, raw.

She finally manages to ask when Lila will ship out. It's tomorrow.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. I wish I didn't have to leave you."

 

Jyn wonders why it's so hard for people to not leave her.

 

* * *

 

 

As her sixteenth birthday approaches, Jyn is nearly bursting at the seams. Recruitment age is seventeen. One more year to go. Another whole _year_. She has been training so long that she could teach basic in her sleep. There's no opponent on base that she hasn't beaten in hand-to-hand at least once. She is so _ready_ to begin her real life. A life where she really kills Kaiju, just like Saw promised her all of those years ago.

Saw, who has been even more distant than usual, lately. Taking lots of trips off-base, and never around much when he's here. She's always lived in quarters across the hall from him, and they partake in weekly meals together out of some remnant of loyalty to her parents' wishes. It's not parental, but it's familial in some way that's a small comfort to her. They've been constants in each other's lives now for eight years, and thanks to the military lifestyle she has no other long-term relationships in her life. She's learned to not get too attached.

"Just some trouble with the bureaucrats, kid," is what he tells her when she finally corners him in the mess. "They aren't willing to do what it takes to put the Kaiju down for good. All they care about is keeping their cushy jobs. No-one's going to be the guy to authorize real change. Stuff that'll actually make a difference. They can't deal with the thought of sacrifice. They're not military, not like us. We understand, you and me. Sometimes the greater good requires people to lay their lives down. Like your parents did."

Jyn nods and eats her rations. Saw complaining about the bureaucracy has been a theme in their dinners ever since he explained the word "bureaucracy" to her. But this feels different, somehow. He's never spoken of "sacrifice" like this, and she honestly can't remember the last time he brought up her parents' death, a topic which they have been singularly skilled at avoiding for many years. It rings strangely in her ears, but she shakes it off. He's complained before, and so what if he's using different language? He's had the same issues for years. They fall silent and continue eating, each caught up in their own thoughts.

She thinks of training. This year is an especially important one for her. This is the year she starts hunting for a partner. Someone to share that spark, the holy grail of Drift Compatibility with. She's seen it happen in class, sparring partners discovering they so perfectly matched that the fight becomes a dance. It's magic, electric, chemistry, witchcraft, art, science, _everything_. This everything will be the last thing she needs to fulfill her life's work. She will find The One, then they will kill Kaiju, like Mama and Papa did. Together.

 

* * *

 

 

 

The rumours start swirling around base in November. Whispers in the showers that Marshal Gerrera has really gone off the deep end this time. Huddled masses in the mess saying that he's being investigated by the MP. He wants to strap bombs to Jaegers. Wants to start kamikaze strikes. Jyn tries not to let doubt creep into her mind. Saw's always been a controversial figure, always had a strong vision of what needs to be done, and it's not the first time people have said that he's going too far. The problem is that Saw has also gone away on another off-base trip when these rumours begin. He didn't tell her he was leaving, that's nothing new, but the coalescence of timing and gossip sits poorly with her.

Still, nothing she can do about it. Training continues. Two weeks pass before she hears the news that confirms her worst fears. Everyone on base is summoned to mess for a briefing, but Jyn is brought to Saw's office.

A woman sits at the desk. It's Saw's desk, or it used to be, but the room has been cleared of all of Saw's things. Jyn shivers. Admiral Ushikawa, the woman, is tiny. She's shorter than Jyn, and Jyn is not a tall person. But she exudes the kind of effortless control that Jyn has seen in the best commanders.

"Ms Erso, sit down. Do you know where Saw Gerrera is?" The question catches her so off-guard that she blinks at the woman.

"No. Saw leaves often, and he rarely tells me where he goes."

Ushikawa frowns at this. It's just a flash of emotion, smoothed over within half a second, but it's enough to put Jyn on edge even further. The questions that follow come in a barrage, after this. Has Gerrera ever mentioned a place he might go if he were in trouble? Has he told Jyn anything about his ideas to weaponize the Jaegers? Is she _certain_ she does not know his current whereabouts? When Jyn professes her (true) ignorance to all of these queries, Ushikawa coldly tells Jyn "the facts".

"Gerrera has stolen a Jaeger and fled from the Shatterdome following an incident which led to the death of a Jaeger technician. If he attempts to contact you in any way, you must alert the MP. Gerrera is gone, this base will be assigned a new marshal shortly."

Jyn doesn't remember returning to her quarters. Doesn't remember the walk through the corridors to the door across the hall from Saw's. What used to be Saw's quarters. She slides down, down her closed door and feels all of the stone in her heart split in two. The Kyber crystal digs harshly into her soft skin where neck becomes chest.

Saw abandoned her. He didn't care enough to even tell her he was leaving. She did _everything right_ and that wasn't enough for him. She's learned how to kill Kaiju, and it still wasn't enough to stop her from getting hurt again. The Jaeger program keeps taking away everyone she's ever cared about. Every friendly technician who was transferred off-base. Every recruit she befriended who died. Lila. Saw. Mama. Papa. The Jaeger program took them all away, one way or another.

 

Jyn leaves on the next flight out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, this has been rolling around in my brain pretty incessantly for the past few days. Full disclosure, I've only managed to see Rogue One and Pacific Rim once, so I'm working a bit from Wikis when it comes to the finer details. Don't worry, we'll start to meet the rest of the squad in the next chapter. I have the plot fleshed out, and I'm estimating that there will be about five chapters, but that might change as things evolve. The plot is sort of a hybrid of the two movies' plots, but will use the Rogue One characters. I also don't have a beta reader, so any mistakes are purely my own.
> 
> To readers who have not seen Pacific Rim and are a little confused at the universe, please bear with me a little longer if you can. It'll all be explained in the next chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

Cassian Andor is no idiot.  
  
He knows that they're all in trouble. More Jaegers are going out than are coming back. And they're not-coming-back faster than they can be replaced. The hulking bipedal mechs are being torn apart as they grapple with the Kaiju, one at a time. The lucky pilots are the ones torn from their Jaegers. Drowned, heads smashed in, whatever else a Kaiju feels like dishing out. Killed instantly, or at least killed after the drift is severed. The unlucky ones have their joined psyches destroyed as one, brains fried from the inside out as their Jaeger is gutted. Cassian's seen videos; it's horrific to watch two people trapped in the pain of each others' deaths.  
  
It's worse still when you consider the very nature of Drift Compatibility. Drifting was supposed to be a solution, this marriage of minds the only way to successfully control the complex mechs. But you can't take any two people and just link their brains together. If they're lucky they'll just hate each other, for every buried memory and hidden prejudice. Drifting is the most intimate connection imaginable with another human being. Souls bared, brains turned inside out like emptied pockets. Strung together by fragile Kyber connections, the only substance they've found that supports drifting. The best pairs are related; siblings, parents and their children. Some are married couples. The few who start out as strangers don't stay that way for long. Many claim their drift partner as a kind of soulmate, platonic or otherwise. How would it feel to experience your soulmate's death as your own?  
  
Cassian's never found anyone who can tolerate to be inside of his mind. He's tried. Gods, he _tried_. Three years he spent in basic. His instructors always said that he had enormous potential as a pilot, but they wouldn't let him linger with the high of their praises. He was too traumatized, too angry. Whenever someone tried to drift with him, they would be confronted with the sight of his parents being torn apart by the building-sized Kaiju that emerged from the sea, like something from a Godzilla cartoon. They'd see it happen before his six-year-old eyes. Watching his mother and father die for nothing, just two more casualties of these mysterious alien beings who seem to have no greater purpose on Earth than devastation. It's too much for anyone. He's just the unlucky guy who doesn't have a choice to turn away.  
  
So he gave up. The PPDC needed intelligence officers, people to track down Kyber smugglers and peddlers of illicit Kaiju body parts. It's not the vision he had for his life, but after the Kaiju invaded the seas, people's dreams started mattering a lot less.

 

* * *

  
  
They've already lost two Jaegers this month. Irreplaceable, singularly unique machines. There's no hope of rebuilding fast enough to keep up. Hong Kong Shatterdome is buzzing with nervous energy. As the only Shatterdome left in operation, the entire world is watching them fail. When Marshal Mothma summons him to her office, he's expecting the worst. _They're shutting us down, we've run out of money, we've run out of time._ Cassian's many things, but deep down he's pragmatic about the future.  
  
So when Mothma sits him down and explains that they've got a lead on a new Jaeger, it's enough to give him pause. People don't talk about getting new Jaegers. Maintaining their aging fleet is all anyone speaks of. A new Jaeger just doesn't happen.  
  
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't understand," he finally gets out.  
  
Mothma explains the whole, sorry tale to him. The rogue former marshal who stole one of the fleet's best Jaegers. The girl he raised like a daughter (at least, the intelligence briefing claims they were close). Gerrera is holed up with the machine in some godforsaken corner of the globe, and every time they try to contact him they reach a dead end. Literally, in the case of one very unfortunate intelligence officer. But now they've got a solid lead on his whereabouts. So, get the girl, get her on-side, get her to contact Gerrera, get the Jaeger. Simple, logical.  
  
"Where is she now?" Cassian asks.  
  
"Alaska. She'll be building the anti-Kaiju wall the Americans are trying out. Extraction Team Bravo is currently retrieving her," Mothma says.  
  
"Extraction Team? Why don't you just put her on a plane?"  
  
She eyes him searchingly, for a second, before she stares back out the window. "Captain Andor, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Gerrera's defection was something of an embarassment to the program. It is not something we....publicize. It's been covered up, for the good of morale and our public image. As such, this is a covert operation. We cannot draw attention to this at all. Ms Erso is not an employee of the government, we cannot simply summon her, 'put her on a plane.' She's a convicted felon, being sent to Wobani Labour Camp. We cannot alert civil authorities to her importance by getting a formal pardon. It will raise too many questions."  
  
Cassian is reasonably certain he hasn't had enough sleep to participate in this conversation. Maybe this is some sort of dream. If it were a dream he'd probably feel less tired, though.  
  
"You... are breaking her out of prison?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"How is a prison break _less_ conspicuous than getting her pardoned?"  
  
"She's being transferred," Mothma explains. "The prisoner transfer vans are not nearly as secure as they would have you believe. Furthermore, we have been told that she is being transferred alongside several prisoners with ties to organized crime. No-one will care about the disappearance of a petty thief who took advantage of the break presumably intended for others. Once she arrives, you will be responsible for her."  
  
Well, at least it's not another smuggling case.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Jyn Erso's record is surprisingly thick for such a young woman, Cassian notes after Mothma dismisses him with a nod and heavy file folder. Born in 2002, which would make her 22 years old. Daughter of Galen and Lyra Erso. He knew he'd recognized her surname from somewhere, and now he realizes with some surprise that her parents were one of the most legendary Jaeger teams ever. They still hold the record for most Kaiju killed, all these years after their deaths. In basic training he'd been shown footage of Galen and Lyra at work, a fuzzy, security-camera quality video of them striding around in the motion-capturing controls of their Jaeger. Two people moving as one. Perfect unison. Textbook Drift Compatibility, his instructor had said.  
  
No-one mentioned them having a daughter. There's a few pictures of Jyn here. The first shows a chubby toddler cradled in her parents' arms, while Galen and Lyra smile proudly in front of a hulking blue Jaeger. Happy little family. It's the only really happy looking photo, as it turns out. The rest are bland security badge pictures of a gradually growing dark-haired girl. A single photo of her sparring in basic (though she looks awfully young to be there). Then just mugshots. Petty theft, sabotage, smuggling. She doesn't seem to run with any particular gang or syndicate, just picks up work wherever she can. There's also resisting arrest charges. A _lot_ of resisting arrest. Including one time when she broke a cop's arm. At least that won't be an issue for the team, since she's being rescued from years in prison.

 

* * *

 

  
  
Kaytu is _pissed_ when Cassian next sees him passing through the Shatterdome. Sure, Kaytu is not really a ray of sunshine on any given day, but Cassian can practically see steam rising from the man's blond hair. He almost looks as mad as when Cassian called him by his first name, that one time.  
  
"Your girl is here," Kaytu says with so much thinly-concealed venom that a follow-up question is clearly expected of Cassian.  
  
"My girl?"  
  
"Erso."  
  
"Well, good. The extraction went well?"  
  
"Yes, very good," Kaytu smarms. "I'm pretty sure I have a broken rib, Cassian. I don't need this. They said it was just a simple extraction mission."  
  
"How did you break your ribs, Kaytu?" Cassian can feel a headache building. An unfortunate side-effect of conversations when Kaytu is in a mood. Which is often. "Did you get into a fight with Donnely again? I told you, just let him show you pictures of his children. It will make everything go easier."  
  
"Rib, singular. Are you even listening? No, I did not get into a fight with Lieutenant Donnely, despite the new photographs of his child's birthday party," Kaytu says with a level of contempt that would not be out of place if Donnely had tried to force him into contact with some horrible, tropical disease that involves spewing blood from one's eyeballs. "For a person who was being freed from prison, Erso was singularly uncooperative. We barely got her out of there. Would you like to know the odds I give you getting through this mission without her violently assaulting you? They're very, very low."  
  
"Kaytu," Cassian sighs, increasingly aware that this conversation is not going to lead anywhere productive. "She was probably just confused. Or something. But you'll have to get past all that, because I want you on my team for this." Cassian can't really remember any of the specific reasons why, at this point, but he knows he had them when he came up with this plan what feels like half a lifetime ago.

  
"I think she tried to _bite_ Sergeant Melshi."  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this starts to flesh out the Pacific Rim aspects more fully for those who haven't seen that movie.


	3. Chapter 3

"When was your last contact with Saw Gerrera?"  
  
The question hit Jyn right in the chest. She tried to ignore the furious pounding of her heart at _his_ name, the man who abandoned her. She eyed her latest questioner. Captain Cassian Andor. A bit older than her, Hispanic (though her knowledge of Spanish accents wasn't good enough to narrow things down further), average height, wiry build. Quietly competent. Unlike the blustery General Draven or the coolly collected Marshal Mothma, Cassian Andor set Jyn on edge. He was too casual.  
  
"It's been a long time," she replied as simply as possible. Glowing in the green light of the projected world map showing the locations of the (now defunct) other Shatterdomes, Andor's face revealed nothing of his thoughts.  
  
"Any idea where he's been all that time?", and oh yes, Cassian Andor was indeed a dangerous man. Jyn had been interrogated before. Every overworked cop who picked her up on minor charges, Admiral Ushikawa after Saw's disappearance, and on occasion by the criminals that she sought employment from. Most people tried to scare her; they saw a small young woman and tried to intimidate their way to information. But Andor was different. He maintained a tone of such carefully cultivated simplicity that had it not been for the circumstances, she could have almost believed he was merely making small talk.  
  
"I like to think he's dead. Makes it easier." And Jyn had been doing just fine with that, thank you very much. She furiously pressed down memories of quiet dinners, big hands teaching her small ones to fight, tiny but brilliant smiles of pride at her accomplishments. Fighting the tide of her roiling emotions, Jyn clenched her fists but stayed still, despite being dragged back into a Shatterdome for the first time in eight years. Thankfully it wasn't the now-decomissioned Anchorage Shatterdome, where she'd grown up and where Saw had thought so little of her loyalty to not even bother to trust her in his confidence. But Hong Kong Shatterdome was still far too familiar even though it's her first time here. All metal and sweaty soldiers and machine oil. And the faint, salty scent that she had come to associate with kyber. When she'd been paraded through the massive central hub where the Jaegers were kept, the sight of the mammoth robots had felt like a cold weight in her chest. It was quieter here than Anchorage had been during her time there, but the program had been gutted in the intervening years and was on its last legs  
  
"Easier than what? Him being a traitor who stole priceless equipment and personnel from the Jaeger program?" It was an odd moment from Andor, a tiny crack in his armour. The question seemed rhetorical, though, because he quickly continued. "He would remember you though, wouldn't he? He might agree to meet you, if you came as a friend?"  
  
Saw just welcoming her popping by as a 'friend'? Not bloody likely.But they didn't need to know that yet. Jyn eyed her three interrogators, trying to assess what approach would be most advantageous to her. A difficult thing to do when she had no idea what the hell they were after. When they'd rather rudely snatched her from the prisoner transfer van, she'd assumed that a criminal connection of hers had come back to settle a debt. If the PPDC was kidnapping people in broad daylight, they must really be desperate. Her musing was interrupted when the short-tempered General Draven barked at her.  
  
"We're up against the clock here, Erso. So if there's nothing further to talk about, we'll just put you back where we found you."  
  
Fine.  
  
"Since you're PPDC you'll all know that he raised me," Jyn said with a level of snark that she felt was entirely appropriate for her current situation. "But I've no idea where he is. I haven't seen him in years."  
  
"We know how to find him. That's not our problem," Andor explained. "What we need is someone who gets us through the door without being killed."  
  
"Oh, and that's not you?" Jyn couldn't help but retort, knowing full well that Saw wouldn't have let anyone from the PPDC within sight of whatever hole he'd dug for himself. Wouldn't let them within sight and live to tell about it, that is.  
  
"As you know, Gerrera has been fighting this war in his own way for quite some time," Mothma said. "But the Kaiju situation is getting worse and he holds one of the last Jaegers left in existence. We have no choice but to try to mend the broken trust that exists and secure use of the Jaeger."  
  
Jyn felt her eyes narrow. There had to be more than that. If they knew where Saw was and wanted his Jaeger, they could've just gone and stolen it back. She seriously doubted that the entire might of the United Nations couldn't summon enough manpower to take back one Jaeger from a man who had cut himself off from all outside help for the better part of a decade. They clearly needed something they couldn't just take in a smash and grab.  
  
"So go get the Jaeger, if you know where it is. What's this got to do with me?" When in doubt, put your interrogators on the defensive. A trick that had worked for Jyn in the past. Sure enough, Mothma and Andor exchanged a glance, clearly trying to decide how much to share with her.  
  
"The Jaeger wasn't the only thing Saw Gerrera stole when he went rogue," Andor said. "How much do you know of your parents' work for the PPDC?"  
  
"My parents?" Jyn asked dubiously, trying to keep her voice steady. Why were they asking about her _parents_? "They...they were pilots, they died piloting. That was their work."  
  
At this Andor's eyebrows furrowed very slightly. At least she thought so. Maybe his face was so blank that she was just imagining the expression. His eyes flicked to Mothma, and the woman shifted her pristine uniform before answering. "Your parents were exceptional pilots, that is true. But their work was not limited to this particular realm. Galen and Lyra were some of the leading members of our Kaiju Sciences program."  
  
Andor picked up the thread again. "We have received intelligence reports from Jedha, Peru. There's a scientist. He works for Saw Gerrera," He stopped for a moment, fixing Jyn with an intense look. "They're saying that he managed to drift with a Kaiju."  
  
Jyn couldn't stifle a snort at this. "Drift with a Kaiju? That's a terrible lie."  
  
Mothma didn't seem to see the humour. "I believe it's the truth. Actual insights into the mind of a Kaiju could change our entire strategy for fighting back against the invasion. We could have some hope of turning this war around. So you're right, this is not just about the Jaeger. If it were we would have other approaches."  
  
"The scientist, the one who works for Gerrera?" Cassian pressed her.  
  
"What about him?" Jyn asked, mind trying to keep pace with the shift in topic.  
  
"His research is based on the work of your parents."  
  
Her parents. Mama, Papa. The farmstead in Anchorage. The smell of the dark, loamy earth. Her Mama's baking. Papa's strong arms as he scooped her up. The saltyspicey tinge of kyber that clutched at her parents' clothing. Jyn's breath hitched as she was pelted with a hailstorm of memories. Draven was saying something about a mission, but she barely heard him over the crashing of her own heart. She tried to focus on the present, eyes tracing the faces of her three interrogators.  
  
"It would appear that Galen and Lyra Erso's research is critical to understanding the Kaiju," Mothma said gravely. "Research that is now in Saw's hands. Given the gravity of the current Kaiju situation and your history with him, we're hoping that Saw will share his scientist's findings with us and return the Jaeger to the PPDC where we can use it."  
  
"And if I do it?"  
  
"We'll make sure you go free."  


 

* * *

  
  
Captain Cassian Andor's personal (or, rather, impersonal) effects were tremendously uninteresting. Jyn now knew this for certain, as she was currently investigating the contents of his duffel while he stood across the windy helipad, furtively conferring with Draven while the tropical humidity of Hong Kong made everything muzzy and damp. Weapons, rations, medpacs, comms equipment. Figures that the man of stone couldn't even cultivate such basic relationships or attachments to merit the inclusion of anything sentimental. Still, he had decent taste in weaponry. The pistol was something that Jyn could work with and it fit nicely in her belt.  
  
As Cassian climbed into the cockpit of the heavy lift Jaeger transport helicopter that they would be taking on this mission and confirmed her acquaintance with the stupidly tall man who'd made her "rescue" an even more unpleasant experience, Jyn thought for maybe just a moment that she could make it through a mission with these two without wanting too badly to murder one of them. She could throw Kaytu's barbs right back at him, and unless Cassian ended up unleashing some tortured emotional side of his seemingly bland personality, he would be tolerable company as well. This feeling of almost-comraderie was rudely interrupted, however, when Kaytu chose to rat her out.  
  
"Why does she get a gun and I don't?  
  
Goddamnit. She didn't bother trying to hide the pistol from Cassian's look. She wasn't going to apologize for wanting to defend herself. She knew how to use one and explained this to him.  
  
"That's what I'm afraid of," Cassian said, a cold expression flattening his face, which had been pleasantly hinting at something nearing human warmth. "Give it to me."  
  
"We're going to Jedha. I follow the news, the city is virtually a warzone," Jyn shrugged. "You want me to help find Saw? Trust goes both ways."  
  
Well, that shook his tree a little. He paused, eyeing her with his stoney look that Jyn had dubbed his 'spy face'. She returned the eye contact, refusing to let this man force her to be vulnerable. Saw, for all the hurt he brought her, had taught her some priceless lessons. And he always told her that the only person who could be guaranteed to defend Jyn was Jyn herself. At this point she would rather swim all the way back across the Pacific than be unarmed. After another moment's look, Cassian reached some decision and turned to sit down. Victory.  
  


* * *

  
  
When Cassian had finally guided the helicopter out of Hong Kong airspace, he took a moment to reassess the mission.  
  
Jyn Erso. He'd expected some reticence from her, a distrust of the PPDC.  A person with so much time spent training and such outstanding potential as a Jaeger pilot doesn't just abandon all of that without reason. Good reason - at least in her mind. Reasons which clearly had something to do with Saw Gerrera. She'd done well trying to mask her feelings, but Cassian hadn't become an intelligence officer without learning to be perceptive. Her entire body had tensed when he mentioned Gerrera's name, as if she were expecting a kick to the stomach. The man had wounded her deeply and then left. Or maybe the leaving itself was where her hurt lay. Either way, Gerrera was a sore spot for her, and Cassian had found that applying pressure to a person's sore spots only offered him additional means of persuasion. He could work with that.  
  
However, it also made the third part of his mission potentially complicated. Draven's orders were clear: Gerrera needed to be eliminated. As long as he was alive, his group served to divert essential resources and personnel away from the Jaeger program run by the PPDC. The Jaeger he'd stolen was just the most obvious example of this. For years the Partisans had been recruiting the best scientists right out of school, had been luring young pilots away with offers of more money and fewer knots of bureaucracy. And worst of all, he was stripping the Peruvian desert of its rich kyber deposits, some of the last productive kyber mines left in the world. If Jyn still had some attachment to Gerrera, Cassian would have to keep her unaware and relatively  complacent until she was no longer needed by the Defense Corp.  
  
"Cassian, the flight to Seattle will last approximately twelve hours," Kaytu said from the co-pilot's seat, interrupting Cassian's thoughts. "We should sleep in shifts so that we will have an alert pilot throughout the Seattle to Jedha leg of the flight, which will take approximately fourteen hours. Do you want to sleep now or later?"  
  
"Now, if you're alright to fly," Cassian answered, unruffled by Kaytu's brusque manner after their long partnership.  
  
"Very well. Before you turn in, I assume you will divest her of the gun? If she attempts to kill me while you sleep it may hinder my ability to continue flying safely."  
  
Cassian rubbed his brows. "Kaytu, she's not going to kill you. She wants you to be able to fly safely just as much as I do."  
  
"She's already tried to kill me once today, Cassian. During the extraction she-"  
  
"I spoke with Melshi, she wasn't trying to kill you, she just-"  
  
"-was extremely volatile." Kaytu plowed on. "However, since you're apparently the expert on her behavior, fine, let her keep it."  
  
"Thank you," Cassian grunted.  
  
"I hope you know that in the event of my untimely death due to your lax attitude towards gun safety around convicted criminals, the odds of you surviving this flight are abysmally low."  
  
"Noted, Kaytu. Wake me if you need anything." Sometimes it was just easier to agree with the man. Cassian began moving toward the back of the helicopter and pretended not to hear Kaytu's mutter of "How am I supposed to wake you if I'm dead?" Less than an hour into a four day mission. Ninety-five hours left to keep the peace. Cassian was not getting paid nearly enough for this.

  
  
The helicopter, built for long flights across the Pacific, was outfitted with long benches which actually made acceptable bunks. Jyn had discovered this for herself and appeared to be curled into a tight ball as Cassian made his way toward the back of the cabin.  
  
She was asleep. Only thirty minutes into the flight and she was already passed out. Cassian felt something in his chest shift strangely as he gazed down at her slight form. Despite her slumbering state she looked no more relaxed now than she had during questioning. Her hand was clutched tightly around whatever was attached to her necklace, gripping it almost painfully. Brows tensed, her right hand brushing his pistol, she was ready to go from dead asleep to fighting in an instant. Still, she'd trusted his company enough to fall asleep.

'Trust goes both ways.' It was a statement that Cassian could easily debate. He'd had plenty of informants who'd trusted him a great deal more than he had reciprocated, accepting his motives at face value and not questioning their own value to him. Was that actually trust? Not something he'd ever given thought to in the past. Jyn didn't seem like a person who would tolerate such an unbalanced relationship from him, though. She would ask more of him.

He mentally shook himself. They did not have any kind of _relationship_ and thinking in those terms wouldn't help him remain objective if she became a hindrance to his mission. Cassian picked the bench furthest away from Jyn and lay down. He hoped that the machine noise of the helicopter wouldn't trigger any dreams of screeching sea monsters and screaming parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I'm back! Sorry for the crazy long delay on this chapter. Life has been conspiring to keep me from writing. But I should be able to get chapters out much more consistently now. Thank you everyone for sticking with me.
> 
> Also paranoid Kaytu who is convinced that Jyn is trying to kill him is basically my favourite character to write ever. I love him so much.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Stardust?"_

 

"Jyn, wake up, my love."

As Jyn pawed at her eyes and turned her head, Mama was sitting on her bed, hands resting on the pretty pink blanket that was Jyn's absolute favourite. She loved it because it was very soft and the colours reminded her of fresh strawberries, which were her favourite food. Mama's hands clutched the blanket tightly as Jyn sat up, then she suddenly let go and spread her fingers very, very wide. Her hands looked like seabirds trying to decide where to land. Eventually they settled on Mama's legs.

"Mama?"

Her Mama smiled and said "hi" in a quiet, warm voice. "I'm sorry to wake you, Stardust. We need to go to work now."

Jyn looked out her little window. It was dark outside, without even the slightest hint of dawn light. "But it's so late, Mama. Don't the Kaiju sleep?" Mama ducked her head and made the scrunchy face she did whenever she was trying not to laugh. In the yellow glow from the hall light Mama's dark hair was so bright and beautiful, like she had sunshine growing from her head.

"We think that Kaiju sleep. But sometimes they're naughty and stay up past their bedtime. Your Papa and I need to make one go back to bed and stop bothering people so they can sleep too." At this Mama took Jyn's tiny hands and stood up, gently tugging until she got to her feet.

"Mama, do I have to go to the 'Dome?" Jyn followed her into the hallway and put on the sweater that her Mama handed her. It was her grey sweater with the cute picture of a kitten on it.

"That's right, love. Maybe one of these days you'll actually see the whole base. Every time we drive you there to stay the night you fall asleep and Papa has to carry you in! You're going to be staying there until we get back, just like last time," Mama said as she put on her shoes. "Uncle Saw will check on you."

Looking out the window in the door, Jyn could see Papa sitting in the car outside. He was tapping his hands quickly against the steering wheel and glancing out into the distance, gazing beyond the hills, toward the sea. Mama stuck a warm hat on Jyn's head while her hands were busy trying to work the zipper on her jacket. The bottom bits weren't lined up right and the little handle wouldn't go up. Jyn huffed in frustration as Mama gently pushed her hands aside and fixed the zipper, sliding it up to her chin with a satisfying burst of little humming hissing noises.

"How long will you be gone, Mama?"

Crouching down to Jyn's level, Mama cupped Jyn's shoulders with her hands and looked right into her eyes for a long moment. "I'm not sure. Sometimes the Kaiju get very cranky." Mama said that in the tone she used whenever she was trying to make Jyn laugh, sort of smiling. But her eyes didn't crinkle at the corners like they did when Mama was really smiling. "We will be home as soon as we can. And when we get back, I promise that Papa will make you his extra yummy pancakes."

"The ones with strawberries?"

"Yes, the ones with strawberries." Mama reached into her shirt then and pulled out her necklace. "You remember what's special about this crystal?"

"It helps you and Papa work together to fight the Kaiju." Jyn recited as Mama slipped the string over her hat and around Jyn's neck. The stone rested gently on the puffy fabric of her jacket, and Jyn grabbed onto it tightly. It felt warm against her skin.

"That's right. Papa and I use it so we can join our minds together. It's very precious to us. And it reminds Papa and me of how much we love each other." At this Mama paused again and her mouth sort of wobbled for a second. Jyn wasn't sure what mouth wobbling meant. She'd have to ask later. "Will you keep it safe for me until I come home?"

"Yes, Mama."

"Thank you, Stardust."

* * *

 

Jyn woke with a start. Her hand was wound around the kyber crystal that still hung around her neck.

It had been a long time since she'd dreamed of her parents. Well, strictly speaking that wasn't true. She often came to wakefulness with faint memories lingering from her sleep, slipping through the cracks in her still raw consciousness before she could catch them. Slivers of warm hugs, strawberry pancakes, the rich dark earthy smell of her farmhouse. But this was the first dream in a long time of such vivid detail. The ringing of her mother's voice bunched up her insides strangely. She looked around to distract herself.

They were still somewhere over the ocean, flying across the arctic to Seattle. The sky outside the helicopter was utterly black but for the stars she could see sprinkled across the endless expanse. Cassian was stretched out on another bench in the far corner of the cabin, apparently sleeping. His hands flutter slightly, brushing at whatever pestered him in dreams. Turning the other way, Jyn could still see the rounded silhouette of Kaytu's head above the top of the pilot's seat. The helicopter's rotors slapped loudly at the air, pulling them ever closer to Jedha. To Saw.

Jyn hunkered down again and closed her eyes. Might as well grab some more sleep. Who knew what tomorrow might bring?

 

* * *

 

 

 _In retrospect_ , Cassian thought from his solitary, crumbling cell, brain throbbing and throat parched from the hours spent baking inside a dark sack at the mercy of the desert sun, _the mission in Jedha City had not exactly gone to plan so far.  
_

 

* * *

 

 

The desert air in the arid foothills near Jedha was achingly dry. It made the skin on the back of Cassian's hands itch. If Jyn was bothered by it, however, she gave no visible sign. He glanced at her dark brown hair while they trekked single-file down the narrow trail that led into the city. Until he'd had a surfeit of time to study her from the relative safety of walking behind where she couldn't see his gaze, he hadn't realized just how small she was. No, not small. Compact. She was physically small, but her entire being thrummed with a fierce energy that was barely contained within her petite frame. Her energy made her anything but small. She turned her head back slightly to catch his eyes with hers and Cassian definitely did not flush at being caught staring. She couldn't know his thoughts, he mentally reminded himself. He still glanced quickly at some particularly interesting rocks and continued on the explanation he'd been giving before he'd gotten distracted.

"Since the Kaiju attacks on Lima, the Peruvian government is barely maintaining order in the capital. They've basically left Jedha to survive on its own."

"And the Empire has moved in to fill that particular power vacuum," Jyn concluded. "Saw being Saw, he's no doubt displeased to have a gang of thieves sticking their nose into his turf."

"Right," Cassian confirmed. He paused again while Jyn scrambled over a tricky section of boulders with a sort of careless agility which made him both envious and for some reason slightly nervous. Just worried that she'd fall and break her neck before she gets us to Saw _,_ Cassian told himself with much less conviction than he'd hoped. He began picking his way over the rocks with methodical precision. "How much do you know about the Empire?"

"I know they're the bastards who got me sent to prison. Stole some things from them for a job. Kaiju body parts, I think," She shrugged slightly, apparently nonplussed with sharing her criminal past. "Didn't need to know. They sent a bounty hunter after me. Bunch of shady thugs."

"They're- they're not just thugs," Cassian said. "We don't have much intelligence on them, but we think they're some kind of cult. A violent one." The trail opened up here and Cassian jogged a few steps to pull level with her. "Some people say they're waiting for governments to fall so they can swoop in and seize power. Some people say they're not just waiting. Whatever their plans, they are interested in the Kaiju. They're the biggest player on the black market for Kaiju remains and kyber." He looked down at Jyn, trying to summon up every bit of gravitas he possessed. "The Empire is dangerous. We're walking right into the city that they think they run. We need to keep our heads down."

Jyn turned her head to meet his eyes challengingly, clearly unimpressed with the suggestion. "I always keep my head down." She even had the audacity to look downright offended when Cassian snorted softly, thinking back to what he'd heard of her actions during the rescue mission. He ducked his head to hide the grin which he now found impossible to suppress.

"Look, just don't cause any trouble."

 

* * *

 

At the time Cassian had genuinely believed that would be enough. He shook his head ruefully and gazed around his empty cell, continuing his deliberately casual lean against the cell door, eyes dipping down to evaluate the lock. The shivering, rocking lump in the cell across the way which on closer inspection appeared to actually be a human being moaned slightly. Things had been going so well at the start of the day. They'd wended their way through Jedha's bustling streets without being harassed by either the con men dressed as monks or the Empire's soldiers. Maybe if they'd chosen another day, another time, or even another route through the city, his plans could have worked. Then again, his plans had severely underestimated Jyn's natural affinity for trouble.

 

* * *

 

As Jyn was led through Saw's rugged compound, she couldn't contain a small gasp when Tognath hustled her out of a corridor and into the central hub. Standing proudly in the centre of the deep, open air canyon which bisected the base, a charcoal grey Jaeger stretched up into the sky, broad shoulders nearly scraping the rock walls. The gargantuan scale of the thirty-story-high mechs had been something she had never grown fully accustomed to, despite all of her time living in their shadows. Every one unique, this particular Jaeger was accented by midnight blue shoulder and chest armour which seemed to nearly sparkle in the dazzling sunlight. Unlike the more modern, digitally controlled Jaegers she had grown up expecting to pilot, this one's mechanics were of a different generation. Searching her mind furiously to retrieve what she'd been taught in history classes, she realized that this Jaeger was a Mark 3 model. This made little sense. By the time Saw had left her, Mark 5's had been the standard for years, replacing the earlier generations when it became clear that the analogue Jaegers were wreaking havoc on their pilots' health. Nuclear reactors weren't meant to be so hastily assembled, and in the rush to produce the Jaegers there had been only superficial attempts to protect the pilots. So why had Saw taken this one?

 

* * *

 

Cassian tried to keep his focus on the job at hand, namely watching for an opportune moment to escape from this cell, but his thoughts kept straying back to Jyn. Where the hell had they taken her? His scowling jailers had provided him with nothing but leering silence and a serious headache from all of the hours spent with a sack over his face. Judging by the now whimpering, muttering man across the way, Saw's people bore no qualms toward mistreating their guests. They could be doing anything to Jyn. Threatening her, coercing her, torturing her. He tried to dam the flood of scenarios, each more awful than the last, that gushed in his mind. Jyn could defend herself. The melee in the plaza had been overwhelming evidence of not just her competence in a fight, but also, somewhat surprisingly, her heart. She'd taken the brunt of a grenade blast protecting him, saved that little girl from the chaos. Hopefully wherever she'd been taken, she was at least being given a chance to fight.

 

* * *

 

Jyn was not remotely prepared to see Saw. She tried to convince herself otherwise, but deep down she felt split down the middle all over again. Her soul was screaming; run, fight, anything but this. Nevertheless, she turned around to face him. Though she had known intellectually that he would have aged in the past eight years, the weathering of his entire body still jolted her harshly. The strong, striking man she'd considered the closest thing she'd known to a father was gone. In that man's place, wearing a cratered version of his face, sat a person who looked like he'd been some Kaiju's chew toy. Jyn forced herself to swallow past the stony lump that had jammed in her throat as Saw spoke.

"Is it really you?"

 

* * *

 

His worries were only worsened by the fact that his comm, thrown onto a nearby table by the Partisan who had searched him, was beeping. Repeatedly. It was going off at least once every minute, for the past fifteen minutes. Knowing Kaytu, it was probably _exactly_ once per minute. Even if he were out of contact, Kaytu should not have been trying to reach him so insistently. They had a system, and nothing within it involved such sustained attempts to make contact. Cassian prayed that his comm was just glitching, but every time it chimed again he felt a knot of dread twist tighter in his chest.

He had to focus on getting himself out of this cell. Whatever Kaytu had to say, Cassian could do nothing for it right now.

 

* * *

 

"You left me behind."

"I was protecting you." Saw said in corrective rebuke, as if that statement were all of the explanation she should require. Jyn tried to keep her breathing steady as she felt her heart slamming heedlessly against her ribs.

"You _abandoned_ me." She hissed, wondering how else she could possibly make him understand what he had done to her.

"You were to be the best pilot in the entire fleet. People were watching you. If I had failed to make a clean break... I didn't want you to be caught up in my mistakes." His still sparkling eyes searched her face. "Not a day goes by I don't think of you..."

"Stop." She could not deal with this. Not now, possibly not ever. The calculating, commanding Marshal Gerrera, that was someone she could handle. Her relationship with him was simple and had always been so, one of order and discipline. Someone she could hate whenever she wanted because he had made her run extra drills or scrub the mess floor. But fatherly, gentle Saw, the man who fought for her, who ate dinner with her, who was _there_ for her in the best way he knew. That was the man who had broken her heart.

 

* * *

 

"Kaiju!"

Cassian's head whipped around, looking for the source of the sudden shout. After a moment's search, he realized that the word had been spoken not by one of the Partisans but by the man in the other cell. Where before he had been quivering and hiding his face he was now possessed by inhumanly intense focus, brown eyes boring into the back of Cassian's cell as if he was trying to look out to the ocean beyond the walls. He'd gone from nervous rocking to unnerving stillness. Cassian looked back to see if his cell had gained any occupants but there was nothing but bare stone. He was in the process of turning back to the lock and ignoring his clearly unstable neighbour when the man started shouting again.

"Kaiju! Kaiju!"

"Shut up, Rook!" yelled one of the nearby guards. Rook. Bodhi Rook? Hadn't that been the name of the scientist from the Empire's blaring messages, the one they were searching for? The one Cassian had concluded was likely his target as well?

"It's coming!"

"Rook, if you don't shut the _fuck_ up I will gag you again!" The jailer accompanied this warning with a deafening slam of his hand against the metal table he sat at, and Rook started rocking and whimpering as the Partisan walked away in disgust.

 Glancing around to confirm that the remaining Partisans were either too far away or too absorbed in other activities to care, Cassian cautiously spoke. "Are you the scientist?" When met with no response he pressed. "Hey, hey, are you the scientist? The Kaiju scientist?"

The man continued his hard stare at the far wall, but his entire body shifted slightly. Cassian chose to take that as a sign he was listening. Then, just as he was about to speak again, the man let out a strangled moan which Cassian with some difficulty made out as a single word. "Scientist?"

"Bodhi Rook?"

Rook curled up further as if he could burrow into the floor if he made himself small enough. _What had they done to him?_ , Cassian wondered in growing horror. Why would Saw do this to his own scientist? Would he do this to Jyn?

"Are you the one who drifted with a Kaiju?" No response. Cassian wracked his brains for something else that could connect him with this man. "Galen and Lyra Erso? Do you know their names?"

Rook winced as if he'd been struck. For a moment Cassian was sure he'd lost his chance at getting anything else out of him. Then he opened his eyes and, for the first time, gazed directly at Cassian.

"I finished the research," He said slowly, as if he had begun to remember something truly horrifying. "I'm the scientist... I'm the scientist."

 

* * *

 

Once she'd pushed past Saw's initial attempts to reconnect things became slightly easier. Oh, just being in Saw's presence was still intensely painful to nearly every cell in her body, sure. But the conversation's shift to her purpose, to obtaining the Jaeger, the data, made it less effort to shove all of her messy feelings back into the box where they belonged. His recriminations were something that she had learned to deal with. But he soon returned to provoking her, questioning her loss of faith in the cause.

"The PPDC? The resistance? Whatever you're calling yourself these days, all it's ever brought me is pain."

Saw's jaw clenched. "You can stand to see the Kaiju towering over every city on the Pacific?"

"It's not a problem if you don't look up."

She was expecting anger. Resistance. Hatred. Disappointment. What she did not expect was Saw's eyes to soften, his brow to furrow in anguish. When he spoke, his hoarse voice rattled slightly.

"You saw the Jaeger for yourself?" Saw asked. She nodded. "I had always hoped that you would pilot Stardust."

Jyn's heart stopped. Her breathing stopped. Everything stopped. Mama and Papa's voices pounded in her head. _Stardust_.

"The PPDC wanted to decommission it after Galen and Lyra died," His eyes met hers, warmth and compassion flooding his face. "I had always intended to look for you, when the time was right. I kept it safe for you, Jyn."

Where just seconds ago she had been itching to fight Saw, to run from his presence, now she could not possibly turn away. _Saw abandoned me, he saved it, he hurt me, he kept_ Stardust _safe...._

Saw leaned heavily on his cane and his face opened up. For just a split second, he became the man who had raised her. The one who, despite rarely knowing how to express his feelings, had always been so proud of her.

"Stardust is rightfully yours."

 

* * *

 

 

The floor was shaking. No, not just the floor. Everything. The walls, the ceiling, his haphazardly strewn personal effects on the table, even the table itself.

This couldn't possibly be a good sign.

Cassian could hear the Partisans shouting to one another all through the mountain compound. A wick of panic had been sparked somewhere, and the fiery chaos was rapidly swirling throughout the claustrophobic space. He heard someone (god, it sounded like a _child_ ) scream.

_Kaiju!_

The moment had just become significantly more opportune for Cassian's escape.

 

* * *

 

 

Saw walked over to the central console and thumbed the controls for a moment, then Jyn's heart flipped uneasily. The face that appeared on screen made her brain prickle with familiarity. But when he began speaking, Galen Erso was instantly recognizable to her childhood memories.

"Log entry, February 29th, 2008. We've made significant progress today. Lyra sketched out designs for a prototype conn-pod that could allow us to drift with a Kaiju for the first time ever. Though in practice it's little different from human conn-pods. Our colleagues believe this work to be far too dangerous. But I know that our science is beyond fault. Hopefully we can prove this to everyone soon." Galen's face twisted for a moment before he continued. "Based on our latest calculations, there should be a Kaiju attack sometime within the next forty-eight hours. Selfish though it may be, I hope this one heads west. Every time we have to suit up and leave Jyn behind, I think my heart breaks a little more." He smiled briefly. "Lyra is so much stronger than I am. 'We're doing this to keep her safe', she reassures me through the link.

Galen paused and folded his hands on his desk, as if weighing the impact of his next words. As he did this, Jyn realized with a start that she recognized the room he was sitting in. It was not some office at the Shatterdome. It was the little alcove that comprised her parents' shared office space at the farmstead. Taped to the wall behind her father's head, out of focus but still recognizable, a shaky childhood drawing of some sort of animal was scratched onto a piece of paper. She didn't remember doing the drawing, didn't remember what the vaguely four-legged shape was intended to represent. By any objective measure it was an awful little picture, and her parents had lovingly displayed it on the wall as though it were some priceless object d'art.

"If the Kaiju does end up coming this way. If we don't, if we can't..." He stared down at his hands, then fixed his eyes on the camera. "Saw, if you find this. If we don't make it back this time... please. Please show this to Jyn. When you think she's ready."

Jyn did not feel ready. She could not look away, despite feeling like a piano wire being torqued far above its intended note.

"Jyn, my Stardust. I hope you never have to see this video. But if you're watching it now, I'm sorry. I can't imagine what you think of us. Your Mama and me. The only explanation I can give for why we had to leave you too soon is that we were trying to protect you. We did everything because we love you. Because just imagining the pain of losing you is so overwhelming that I risk giving up."

Her legs were trembling. Why couldn't she stop her legs from trembling? Jyn felt hysterical laughter trying to crawl up her throat. Her body had become a marionette, connected to her brain by nothing but the tenuous hold of some snarled cotton threads, twitching and jerking whenever she tried to assert any influence. Being unable to control her own limbs was a horrifyingly fascinating sensation. In the video Galen carried on, oblivious to her ever growing detachment from her body.

"I assume rationally, logically, that you have grown up in the PPDC. It's difficult to imagine Saw steering you any other way, and you always had the same anger, the same insistent sense of righteousness as your mother. I hope that by the time you see this, the Kaiju war will be mere history. It frightens me to imagine you grown, somehow working to oppose the invasion, whether from a laboratory or a Jaeger. It frightens me, and I think the Pan Pacific Defense Corp could ask for no better friend."

 

* * *

 

Dragging the only semi-conscious Bodhi Rook through the Partisan base, Cassian tried to slip into the calm frame of mind that had always served him well during the most tense of missions. He was not overly successful. His inner intelligence officer (who quite frankly had mostly dominated his thoughts ever since he'd given up on his piloting dreams) barked at him, reminded him that Jyn no longer furthered his mission. Kaytu (who had given him an earful for being out of contact when a Kaiju was storming the city, as if Cassian could have been reasonably expected to rectify that from a cell) was prepared to extract the Jaeger as soon as Cassian made it to the chopper, and with Bodhi in tow he had the next best thing to the actual data files.

But she had been so brilliant all day. Fierce and radiant, burning with a passion for doing right that all her years as a criminal had done nothing to extinguish. He'd watched her take out a squad of soldiers single-handedly, spinning and lunging with her batons in a display of prowess so remarkable that he'd been incapable of doing anything but looking on in awe. She would be an _extraordinary_ Jaeger pilot.

He desperately asked everyone who ran past him where they had taken her. Finally getting an answer from a horrifyingly young boy, he all but hauled the stumbling Bodhi up the stairs.

_Please let her be alive._

 

* * *

 

"...if you're happy, Jyn, then that's more than enough."

All of the ugly feelings that Jyn had buried after her parents' deaths were clawing their way back to the surface, splitting her into jagged fragments. Anger, hurt, loneliness. Love. The entire room seemed to shake. Jyn gave up trying to deal with her increasingly uncooperative legs and dropped to her knees, head swimming.

Onscreen, Galen seemed to shake himself and refocus. "Saw, drifting with the Kaiju, that's the key. That's the only way we'll learn how to stop them. You'll need a Kaiju. Their brains are stable for some time after death, you should be able to drift with one then. The wall will never work and you know that. Jaegers are what we need to win. Lyra and I, we believe that there's some kind of shield over the breach. Something is preventing anything we send from penetrating into the Kaiju's world, we've seen that whenever we try to probe or bomb it. You must figure out what is protecting the breach and find a way to break through. If we cannot seal the gap between worlds, they will never stop coming. It's-"

 

* * *

 

 

_She's alive._

Cassian felt some of the tension in his chest uncoil as he burst into the room, taking in the sight of Jyn. Something was still wrong, though. A monstrous impact shook the entire base, sending cables skittering around the floor and sparking ominously.  The ceiling let out a thunderous snap as cracks formed in the rock and he heard Bodhi whimper behind him. He turned his focus back to Jyn, to the man crouching near her as she knelt senselessly on the ground. Cassian's pistol was pointed at Saw before he'd even felt the conscious decision be made. Jyn's reflexes had been impeccably quick in all the time he'd known her, but now she failed to react in any way to his drawn weapon and his stomach lurched, fears from earlier returning to mind. _What had Saw done to her?_

"Get away from her!" He shouted. Draven's orders pounded through his head. Killing Gerrera was the last part of his mission. He should have just taken the shot. Gerrera had been caught off guard, the moment was perfect. But he found the idea of potentially missing Gerrera, shooting Jyn, had become unbearable. If he could just get him away from Jyn...

Saw stood painfully, swaying as the room was rocked by the shock waves of another impact. "This was not my doing." His eyes met Cassian's, eyes of a soldier. "She was not ready for what she saw."

What she _saw?_ Cassian couldn't let himself lose focus. He kept his gun on Gerrera, readying to make the shot when the man spoke again.

"If you can save her, take her."

Cassian's gaze lurched back to Jyn, still sitting in a stupour, reminding him all too much of Bodhi's pain in his cell. She looked utterly broken. He should just leave them both. They were both expendable to his mission now.

An unearthly sound ripped through the base. A grinding, howling _shriek_ of fury. Cassian had heard this noise before. Only once.

_¡Mamá! ¡Papá!_

He shook himself, looked at Jyn again. He could not let her die, could not bear to kill her adoptive father before her eyes. He holstered his gun and crouched down next to her, tried to rouse her from her shock. But there seemed to be nothing left of her. He could almost forget about how very _alive_ she'd been. He tried again.

"Jyn, we need to go! Before the Jaeger is destroyed, before-" Something in Jyn shifted back into place so suddenly that Cassian stopped. He didn't know why mentioning the Jaeger had gotten through her haze, but at this moment it did not matter. Her green eyes locked onto his. Gerrera commanded her to go with him, and Cassian felt a flush of relief as Jyn pulled herself upright, grabbing Saw's arm. She was still with him. 

"Save yourself, please." Saw said, almost too softly for Cassian to hear. His eyes were no longer those of a soldier. He looked tenderly at Jyn, and Cassian was struck for the first time by how profound their relationship must have been, how much there was between these two damaged souls. Saw was looking at her with an expression that Cassian could only describe as 'pride'. She let go of his arm. Another tremor shook the room as one of the walls began to buckle. They were out of time. Cassian grabbed Jyn's arm, urging her to go with him to the doorway where Bodhi stood. "Come _on!_ " Jyn still hesitated, eyes locked on her mentor's haggard face. Panic flared in Cassian's gut. _She won't leave him._

Gerrera yelled something, maybe "go!", but his words were drowned out by another deafening scream from the Kaiju which was clawing its way through the base. Jyn remained torn, feet acquiescing to Cassian's traction on her arm, eyes desperately holding onto Saw. "There's no time!" Cassian shouted, pulling harder and finally getting her moving forward. The ceiling started loosing chunks of rock as Saw imparted one final plea.  
  
"Save the Jaeger! Save the planet!"

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise we'll be meeting Chirrut and Baze soon...


	5. Chapter 5

light. Blinding, painful

dust

_screaming_

a warm hand, traction on her arm, dragging her away

 

* * *

 

 

Even when Jyn turned back to the moment, much later, their narrow escape from Saw's base was fragmented, shattered in her mind, refusing to repair itself into a whole, recognizable shape. Whenever she tried to gather its pieces more slipped away than she could gather around herself.

The helicopter banked steeply and the engulfing tumult demanded her attention, the great machine howling like a gored bull as Kaytu and Cassian tried to force it through the sort of deft, evasive maneuvers for which it had never been intended for even under ideal conditions, much less while lifting a Jaeger. Across the cabin from Jyn, the skinny man whom Cassian seemed to have acquired during their separation was crawling on the grating. His hands scrabbled and clawed, unseeing eyes blown dark and wide in pure, animal terror.

Jyn's hands were quivering. She clenched them, letting her short nails bite into the meat of her palm when the chopper dipped. Out the window, beyond the new man, she caught a fleeting glimpse of leathery scales, mottled fathoms' black and poisonous green. The beast's head came into view, incongruously small compared to its massive body, beetle-like eyes shining horribly, tooth-strewn maw jacked open in a bellowing fury. It raised a blubbery arm and began, slowly, a swing of its gnarled paw toward their cabin.

 _God_ , Jyn thought, _We're going to die here._

"Punch it!"

Jyn wouldn't have thought it possibly for the engine noise to get a single decibel louder right until it did. Violent shudders jolted the cabin. The man across from her fell hard, curled into a fetal ball, pleading and whimpering in words that were swallowed up whole, unheard. As the chopper rose, the Kaiju slipped from view, Peruvian hills shrinking into a reddish haze, splashed with black towers of pluming ash. When it banked, turned north, the ocean became visible, a glittering field of chopped-up water. Hugging the coast, crumpled, sagging next to the steely sea, the remains of Jedha were torn to ruin, unrecognizable as the vibrant city Cassian had herded her through what seemed like a lifetime ago. Though they were too distant to make out individual people, the entire city appeared unnervingly still. The sensation prickled strangely in Jyn's mind. There was something _dead_ about the town, as if it had been simply snuffed out. She had no clue how she could perceive this at such a distance, but it was undeniably true. All that remained was a blackened scree of stone and metal, now so barren that it seemed impossible that any human could have ever lived there. No fires were being put out, though the flames nosed and licked at the few staggering structures that remained upright, coaxing them alight. The chopper turned ever so slightly and the rubble field suddenly shone, sunlight turning it a dazzling a shade of cobalt, one so intense as to be unnatural. Alien.

 _Kaiju blue_. _It must be injured_. Jyn's mind turned to the presentation she had given in front of her class, all of eleven years old and already more knowledgeable than most of the recruits. _Kaiju blood, also called Kaiju blue because of its colour, is highly toxic to all terrestrial life. Any exposure in liquid or aerosol form, even trace amounts, will cause humans to fall into a state of shock. If untreated this can be fatal within minutes, depending on how much blood is present._ She'd gotten an A for that project.

Returning from her thoughts, she heard Cassian murmur something to Kaytu as he wandered back toward her. Or, rather, toward them; her and the new man, who was sitting leaned up against the wall, chest labouring, but hands and eyes becalmed. He looked nearly human again.

"Back to Hong Kong?" She asked Cassian.

He bobbed his dirt-smeared face, looking as tired as she felt.

Jyn glanced to the back of the helicopter, in the direction where she knew the Kaiju was obliterating the remains of Saw's base. All of those people. They'd be dead now. Dead or dying. Jyn knew she should be feeling grief, anger, something, but dull exhaustion was the only sensation running through her body.

"There's nothing we can do," Cassian said hoarsely, picking up on her train of thought, "We can't go back. There's nothing left." She turned back to him. His face was stony. "There wasn't enough time."

"So, we didn't get the data," She asked slowly. Her parents' logs were gone for good. That girl she saved, it was all for nothing. They'd fought all day and tried _so hard_ and they'd still lost almost everything. Her parents' Jaeger seemed like an inadequate trade for those lives.

Spreading a hand toward the skinny man, Cassian replied. "I didn't have a lot of time to question our friend Bodhi," Bodhi, as he was apparently named, pulled himself into a sitting position, whimpered plaintively, words Jyn couldn't make out. "But he's the scientist. All his work is based on your parents' research."

Jyn turned back to Bodhi, to find him fixed on her, eyes shining, hoarse voice straining until he managed an audible croak.

"You're Galen and Lyra's daughter?" Bodhi's brown eyes searched her face, a painful grimace that was probably intended as a smile lifting his features for a second. "You're Jyn?"

The sound of her real name, the one that she hadn't used in such a long time, threw her off balance. Bodhi stared at her, mouth tipped slightly open, looking wretched but somehow hopeful. Jyn swallowed. "You know them? From the videos?

"Yes," Bodhi nodded as best he could, a stiff dip of his neck. A shudder rocked through him.

"Did they-? What did they say?" She wasn't sure what she meant. Whether she was asking about the Kaiju or how much they'd spoken of her or just anything about them. With a start she realized that Bodhi likely knew Galen and Lyra better than Jyn herself did, better than her own patchy haze of repressed memories.

"They said, Lyra said - she said that we could win the fight. If we were brave enough to listen to our hearts," Bodhi licked his lips. "To trust ourselves to know what's right,"  His eyes fluttered, body jolting. He was slipping away from reality, rapidly sinking into a catatonia.

"Hey, stay with us," Cassian urged, leaning down to take Bodhi by the shoulders.

"She said," Bodhi stammered, "We needed to fight...together," his wavering concentration suddenly snapped back, fixing Jyn with an almost gentle gaze. "They loved you so much. They were doing it all for you." His eyes dipped shut and his head dropped sickeningly to loll over his chest. If Cassian hadn't been holding him she was certain that Bodhi would've collapsed to the floor.

"What's wrong with him?" She asked Cassian as he gave up trying to revive Bodhi. When Cassian gestured and took Bodhi under the arms she walked forward, grabbing the man's legs so they could hoist him onto a bench.

"He drifted with a Kaiju, I think it scrambled his brain. A bad drift with a human is disorienting as hell," Cassian frowned for a moment, seemingly caught in a brief memory. "It must be awful, what he's going through." Reaching a steady hand down, Cassian checked Bodhi's pulse, fingers resting lightly on the still man's neck. Whatever conclusion he reached from this, Cassian grunted briefly before rising and walking back to the cockpit, leaving Jyn alone.

 

* * *

 

Jyn wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting opposite Bodhi, whose form was motionless apart from occasional tremors. It seemed like a very long time to leave a person in such a lifeless state, but Cassian had apparently decided that stopping to seek medical aid was not on the agenda.

Now that the adrenaline rush had fully worn off, the day's effects on Jyn's body made themselves painfully known. She catalogued the sensations in lieu of any better way to pass the time. Her right ankle throbbed, twisted during one of the brawls in Jedha city. Bruised ribs, bruised arms, bruised shins. Bruised Jyn. The shrieking whine in her ears that had begun after the blasts in the plaza had only slightly abated, finally subsiding enough that she could listen to her own thoughts.

_Save the planet!_

Saw was dead. She hadn't see him die but Saw would have never wanted her to see that. Wouldn't have wanted anyone to see it, the moment of greatest weakness when a human body simply stops. He was dead, though. No-one could have survived such an attack. She tested the notion of his death in her head. It didn't feel anything like all the times she'd tried to convince herself that he meant nothing, that he was dead to her anyways. This was different.

This _hurt_.

Whenever she'd thought of Saw before it had hurt. Of course it hurt. But it was the hurt of an old injury, the ache of a stiff joint, the prickling twinge of an unhappy ligament. This didn't ache and twinge. It felt like her entire body was trying to cave inward, fold itself into her chest. She hadn't thought it was possible to find a deeper pain than the knowledge that Saw was living somewhere, having simply forgotten her, but this was an entirely different sensation. Jyn fumbled with a shaky breath.

Cassian would have killed Saw. Her internal strife had not been so severe as to outweigh the basic instincts of her ten years spent training. Soldier's instincts. She could not possibly miss a bared gun. Jyn didn't know anything about Cassian, really, didn't even know if he'd ever tried to be something other than a spy. But there was something about him, a focused intensity which she had only ever seen in soldiers. An intensity that she saw in herself. After all, as Saw had loved to remind her, a Jaeger pilot is not just a driver. They are all soldiers. So she was certain that Cassian at least knew his way around weapons to at least know the most fundamental truth of guns.

 

* * *

 

 

"You're too tense," Saw chided, "If you are afraid you will get hurt."

Jyn grimaced, re-adjusted her grip on the semi-automatic pistol that Saw had pressed into her small hands. Some part of her knew that there was something _wrong_ about this scenario; that nine-years-old could not possibly be the proper age to learn how to kill. But once Saw had set his mind to teaching her something, Jyn had learned quickly that her mentor could not be shaken from his task. She finished, stilled, and felt Saw lean over her shoulder.

"Now, what is the first rule?"

"Only point a gun at something you intend to kill," Jyn recited. She tried to avoid thinking of her old life with Mama and Papa and the soft grass of the fields. Mama and Papa hadn't taught her how to kill anything. They'd taught her how to grow plants; how to softly press seeds into the dark, loamy earth and wait, wait, wait for the green of life. Jyn had brushed the springy little sprouts with the round tip of a single finger, watching the baby plants bob, their special first pair of leaves all round and smooth and perfect, stretching proudly above their thin stems. Papa had always said that she was good with plants, he said that maybe when his Stardust was all grown up she could be a botanist. A plant scientist. Watching her little plants grow had made Jyn feel good, seeing something that _she_ cared for become big and strong. Happy plants.

How had her life turned so upside-down?

"Yes, that's right," Saw said, bringing Jyn back to the present. The gun felt so heavy. Hard and metal and deadly. "If you are pointing your gun at someone, you are willing to kill them."

Jyn wished Saw had said 'something' instead of 'someone'. She tried to remind herself that this was what grown-ups did and it was part of growing up. _Everyone needs to know how to kill._

She raised the pistol, cupping it securely between her hands, and pointed it down the range. Steady hands, steady breathing, steady heart.

"How's this," she asked him.

"One moment," Saw said quietly, presumably trying not to startle her. "Your ears," he added, reaching down to pluck up the big muffs that lay draped around her neck. He gently lowered them onto her head, fingers shifting around the rim of the cups to ensure that they were sealed correctly. As his hands withdrew he gently patted her shoulder.

"Very good," Saw praised, voice muzzy and quiet through the thick ear protectors. "Now the safety."

Jyn reached her thumb up and carefully pressed the little lever on the left side of the gun. She swallowed, fixed her focus down the shooting range again. Her hands felt too big and too small all at once, unused to being wrapped around the pistol. The gun was small, Saw said he'd chosen it for that reason, but it still had that fundamental mismatch that came to a child trying to use something made for a grown-up. Inescapable incompatibility. Focusing on her breathing, she waited for an exhale that felt less shaky than the others. She squeezed the trigger.

Guns are _loud_. Despite the insulting muffs, the sound was still painfully sharp, a violent crack that was profane against the silence that had reigned moments before. The gun slammed back against her hands, forcing them to jump back and up, sending a jarring thump down her arms into her shoulders and chest. After a long moment of white noise in her brain, Jyn remembered to breathe, sucked a shaky gulp of cool air. She took her finger off the trigger and pressed the safety lever again, carefully setting the gun down on the bench in front of her, ensuring the barrel pointed down-range.

Saw was staring down at her as she removed her ear protectors and turned. Her entire body trembled.

"Was that okay?" she asked him, silently praying that she'd gotten it right. Saw did not tolerate mistakes. If she'd done anything wrong he would make her repeat the entire process until she could not possibly transgress.

Instead of responding Saw nodded his head, gesturing toward the paper silhouette at the far end of the range. She looked back, having forgotten to even check her own aim.

"You will make a fine Jaeger pilot," Saw said, voice all gravelly, "Just like your parents."

Her first ever shot had pierced the inky silhouette, leaving a small hole in the paper which the grey Alaskan sunshine bled through. Not perfect centre, but Jyn could fix that. She would become better at killing.

 

* * *

 

Cassian levered up from the captain's seat as Kaytu glanced darkly at him. He'd put off going back to the cabin for hours, even though he'd have never admitted to avoiding it. Avoiding _her_.

But he needed to sleep at some point, and the day's punishing action had left him truly exhausted. Kaytu had all but kicked him out of the cockpit, citing all sorts of rules about cockpit behaviour that Cassian had never heard before, despite all of his years piloting various craft for the PPDC while on missions. Sometimes it was honestly hard to tell if Kaytu was just making things up. His simultaneous disdain for humanity and frequently skeptical approach to regulations meant that inventing some imaginary prohibition against sleeping within three metres of any aircraft controls would be entirely plausible if Kaytu had simply wanted to make Cassian leave.

Cassian left. He spun and began walking back through the helicopter, eyes alighting on Jyn's crouched form. She was hovering over Bodhi, one hand on the man's wrist, presumably checking his pulse. His mind skipped quickly to hours earlier, Jyn on the ground, his gun pointed in her direction. Yes, he had technically been aiming at Gerrera, but the image of Jyn's pale face rising above the grey slit of his gun barrel was not something that he could easily forget. That split second before his training kicked in and he'd lowered his gun, realizing that he couldn't possibly shoot her. Couldn't possibly shoot Jyn, who had suddenly become a person Cassian could rely on to cover his back.

_"Pon la pistola abajo hijo, si no es que me vas a disparar."_

His grand uncle's words cracked unexpectedly through his head. Uncle Virgilio may have had an inexplicably loose definition of safe gun storage, given that Cassian often found his old army pistol and pretended to shoot Kaiju in the back yard, but once he laid down a rule it was always to be obeyed. Cassian had listened, never pointing the gun at him again, since he didn't really want to shoot his only caretaker. But Cassian had been drawn to the gun, to the idea of having a real _weapon_ , some way to fight back against the world, to stop things from being taken away. The old man had given him a cheap BB rifle for his next birthday. The second birthday since he'd had to move to the countryside. The only instructions Uncle Virgilio gave were a gruff "No hagas nada _estupido,_ " as if a prohibition against doing anything stupid could possibly amount to real training. Despite the lack of tutelage, Cassian had taught himself well, putting the little metal balls into fence posts, plants, anything that would stay still long enough for him to hit. By the time he'd had to kill his first man, Cassian's aim had been true. If he had chosen to kill Gerrera, he could have. Letting him live, albeit leaving him to die, was a choice. One that he shouldn't have made, if he'd been a good spy. A good soldier. But Jyn's face...

He wasn't sure how meaningful that choice would be to Jyn, though. Now she had lost the glazed look of emotional shock, settling into something far colder, more dangerous. Whatever she thought of him now, Cassian had no desire for a confrontation. He turned away, began mechanically stripping off his dusty coat and gloves.

"You lied to me," she said, striding over. Leaving her enough time to really stew over the events at Gerrera's base had clearly been a mistake. She was _ready_ for this, itching to fight. Cassian felt himself grimace slightly before he could smooth his face over. His mind quickly ran through scenarios for how this conversation could go. Letting her get truly angry was not acceptable right now.

"You're in shock," Cassian lied, refusing to meet her gaze. She wasn't in shock, not anymore. It had been hours since the attack and she seemed alert as ever. But if he could just get her to stand down he might have a chance of keeping the peace.

"You went there to kill him. Deny it," she challenged, leaning forward as Cassian felt himself flinch in surprise. The accusation somehow stung, despite being true. He _hadn't_ killed Gerrera, though. Why couldn't she see that? Cassian turned away again, focused on making sure his gloves and coat were not rumpled. He wished it felt less like avoidance and more like purpose.

"You're in shock," he emphasized, as if the repetition would make it any less untrue, "and looking for someplace to put it. I've seen it before," Cassian nodded at her, drawn back to her face.

Her expression curled briefly into a bitter twist. "I bet you have. You lied about why we came here. Maybe you've been lying since Hong Kong. Saw was always a target for you."

"I had him in my sights," Cassian rejoined, temper rapidly fraying. "I had every chance to pull the trigger. But did I?" He held her cold, cold gaze.

"He's dead now. You might as well have," she hissed, "If you hadn't been sticking a gun in his face, maybe there would've been time for him to escape."

Cassian felt anger bubble up through his chest, driving him to lunge forward, into Jyn's space. She was _there_ , she had seen Gerrera choose to stay behind. No way in hell would he let her blame the man's suicidal choices on Cassian's mission. "I had orders! Orders I disobeyed!" He needed to make her understand how much his disobedience cost. How he'd done it for her, because he'd wanted to spare her. But his efforts apparently meant nothing to her. He scoffed. "But you wouldn't understand that."

Jyn's eyes narrowed. "Orders? When they tell you to kill people?" Jyn pulled away from him, snapped her mouth shut, as if the words were so bitter that she could barely speak them. Cassian flinched back, brain screaming to flee, run, get away from this horrible conversation. All of the trust they had built was slipping through Cassian's fingers and he couldn't figure out a way to stop it. Jyn's chin bobbled, just briefly, and then her face cracked into a cruel smirk.

"Might as well be a Kaiju."

White noise filled Cassian's head. The pounding of his heart. How had they become so broken? This woman, who had saved his life and fought by his side and who seemed uniquely talented at taking him apart, she was walking away like she had gained victory by destroying him and Cassian stalked after her, feeling like a wounded animal. Like his insides were hanging out and they were both backed into some corner but couldn't find any way out that didn't involve tearing each other to pieces.

"What do you know? You never actually fought. You ran away, just decided to stop caring," he said, desperate and frightened of what he had become without realizing. Every ugly fear was clawing at him, congealing into a acidic scoff. "Suddenly this is real for you? Now that, what, that you finally got around to it? Some of us still live this fight. I waited so long to be able to fight back and I'm still stuck on the sidelines. And you? You got to grow up living this, trained to pilot for years and years, and you just - you walked away. You wasted it."

Cassian felt sick, pulling her apart this way, but his blood was pounding in his ears and he felt so fucking trapped and he hated it. Hated that this miraculous woman had never embraced her full potential. Hated that she was giving voice to every doubt that had been gnawing on his heart for so fucking long. "Ever since I was six years old, it was the only thing that mattered to me, and you just threw it away," his voice was wild and he knew it. But she just wasn't going to get it. He pitched his voice low, quiet, trying to quell the pain in his chest. "You're not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to keep fighting."

As soon as he spat out the last, bitter word of his speech, Cassian wanted to take back the entire thing. Jyn's face was pinched, carved into something that almost looked like grief. For a moment he thought she was about to plead with him, soften, back down. Until then he hadn't realized just how much he _wanted_ it; wanted to reconcile with her, to mend over the craters and canyons that had eroded through their fledgling relationship.

"You can't talk your way around this," Jyn said, sad and aching. Cassian's heart lurched. But then her face hardened, brows dropping, closed into icy, rueful regret. "You don't know me."

"I thought I did," Cassian hissed, leaning into her space, needing to punish her for the hurt that coursed through him. He couldn't deal with this any longer.

"Kaytu, switch shifts with me," Cassian ground out, tracking back to the cockpit. He'd rather crash this helicopter than spend another second fighting with Jyn.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've shamelessly given some of Galen's lines to Lyra. I regret nothing about this.  
> A few other thoughts:
> 
> I don't want to overdo the child-soldier feels, but it's such a central part of Jyn's life that I also didn't want to skirt around it, and its absence is critical to Cassian here. Cassian's background in this story is quite a bit different and his inability to rebel in the way he wants shapes his actions significantly.
> 
> Also, from this point on the chapters will likely be coming out a bit faster, because we're moving into a section of the story that transitions more heavily into the Pacific Rim plot. Writing scenes that are in Rogue One, but having to make them fit just so in this story is a very complicated thing for me to do, and I had to take a break from writing this because life was being really shitty to me and it was just too tiring to parse together the RO-but-not scenes. This is a bit sooner than I'd wanted this chapter to end, but I figured it would be better to push this out soonish rather than more waiting.
> 
> Anyways, when I move more into the world of Pacific Rim it should be quite a bit more freeing, because I can essentially write the characters from scratch rather than trying to match things up with source material that every Rogue One fan is familiar with. Thank you, everyone, for your patience so far.
> 
> Also huge thanks to my friend KD, who did the Spanish translations for this chapter. :) Muchas gracias, mi amigo.


End file.
